Scrapbook for Chinese Collectors: Shu Hua Shuo Ling

The Shu Hua Shuo Ling—a treatise on painting and forgery—was written in the eighteenth century by the relatively obscure Chinese scholar, Lu Shih-hua. It might have vanished from the landscape of Asian art history, had the eminent Sinologue, R. H. van Gulik, not recognized its essential value to our modern understanding of Chinese connoisseurship. Its worth lies in the intellectual honesty of the author in his description of the artist, his motivations and the criteria by which his work was...